Attitude Toward the Ad (Warmth) (ATADW)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Warmth) (ATADW) scale is a four-item psychometric measurement instrument designed to capture consumer perceptions of interpersonal warmth, affective closeness, coziness, and relational gentleness communicated within marketing communications and advertising stimuli. Developed and validated by Kim and Ball (2021), the instrument operationalizes the communion/warmth dimension of the foundational Stereotype Content Model (SCM) within persuasive advertising contexts. The scale assesses four tightly integrated manifestations of promotional warmth: general warm feelings, cozy atmospheric tones, communicative warmth conveyance, and affectionate tonality. Administered via a standard seven-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), the instrument provides a parsimonious, unidimensional, and psychometrically robust measurement model. Across experimental studies investigating advertising appeals, brand perception, and social perception compensation effects, the ATADW demonstrates exemplary internal consistency reliability (with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding .90) and robust construct, convergent, and discriminant validity. By isolating perceived ad warmth from broader, valence-based general evaluations of the advertisement ($A_{ad}$) and orthogonal dimensions such as perceived competence, the ATADW enables consumer psychologists, communication scholars, and market researchers to evaluate subtle emotional heuristics and the unintended downstream trade-offs—such as the warmth-competence compensation effect—triggered by affective advertising executions.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward the Ad, advertising warmth, Stereotype Content Model, social perception, emotional advertising, consumer psychology, warmth appeals, compensation effect, brand perception, advertising effectiveness, scale validation, psychometrics.

3. Authors

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Warmth) (ATADW) scale was developed, operationalized, and validated by:

• Taemin Kim, Ph.D. — Assistant Professor of Advertising and Marketing Communications, Department of Advertising and Public Relations, School of Media and Communication. Dr. Kim’s research program centers on consumer information processing, consumer social perception mechanisms, emotional advertising appeals, and corporate social responsibility messaging.
• Jennifer Gerard Ball, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Advertising, Department of Advertising and Public Relations, Temple University. Dr. Ball specializes in health communication, pro-social and emotional advertising appeals, persuasion dynamics, and consumer cognitive responses to mixed advertising stimuli.

Direct inquiries regarding the foundational empirical studies and methodological designs can be directed to the corresponding authors via their respective university affiliations or through the publication archives of the Journal of Advertising.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Ad (Warmth) (ATADW) scale is to quantify consumer evaluations of advertising warmth specifically, rather than general positive affect or global ad favorability. Historically, advertising research evaluating emotional appeals grouped diverse consumer reactions under broad umbrellas such as positive attitude toward the ad ($A_{ad}$) or general hedonic valence. However, advances in social cognition reveal that human beings evaluate social targets—including corporations, spokespersons, brands, and the advertisements representing them—along two fundamental, functionally distinct cognitive dimensions: warmth and competence. The ATADW was developed to isolate the warmth dimension in persuasive marketing environments, providing researchers with an empirical tool capable of detecting nuanced affective tones.

In consumer psychology and marketing research, advertisers frequently craft executions emphasizing emotional closeness, tenderness, familial bonds, empathy, and homelike coziness. Although these campaigns seek to establish brand favorability and consumer connection, the deployment of overt warmth appeals can generate unintended cognitive consequences. Specifically, Kim and Ball (2021) demonstrated that due to the psychological compensation effect, an overt focus on advertising warmth can lead consumers to infer reduced advertiser or product competence under certain boundary conditions. To test these subtle and counterintuitive social perception dynamics empirically, researchers require an exact, validated tool that measures perceived warmth without conflating it with competence, humor, aesthetic quality, or purchase intention. The ATADW fulfills this diagnostic and theoretical need.

Beyond theoretical modeling, the ATADW offers substantial utility for applied market research and pre-testing. Commercial practitioners and advertising agencies can administer the four-item scale during creative copy testing, storyboard evaluations, and pilot testing to verify whether intended emotional executions actually project authentic warmth or fall flat. In clinical, non-profit, and public health campaigns—such as smoking cessation, vaccination promotion, or mental health awareness messaging—assessing ad warmth helps determine whether message framing evokes comforting, supportive, and non-threatening psychological states among vulnerable target audiences. Thus, the scale provides a rigorous bridge between fundamental social cognitive theory and practical communication design.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct captured by the ATADW is Perceived Advertising Warmth, defined as the degree to which a consumer perceives an advertising execution as projecting friendliness, sociability, sincerity, empathy, coziness, and interpersonal affection. In social cognition literature, warmth represents the primary evolutionary dimension of human judgment: when encountering a social actor, individuals first seek to determine the target’s intent—specifically, whether the entity is friendly, benign, and trustworthy (warmth) versus hostile or indifferent.

Within advertising, this construct manifests through several distinct yet highly correlated psychological facets operationalized within the four items:

• Affective Warmth: The overarching emotional sense of benevolence, relational comfort, and emotional gentleness evoked by the message (captured by items assessing whether the ad “felt warm” and “conveyed warmth”). This facet evaluates whether the ad succeeds in generating a climate of basic emotional safety and positive communion.
• Cozy Atmosphere (Atmospheric Intimacy): The environmental, sensory, and situational framing of domesticity, comfort, relaxation, and security (captured by the item assessing whether the ad had a “cozy tone”). Coziness reflects physical and emotional shelter, reduced stress, and the comforting pleasures of interpersonal intimacy.
• Affectionate Tonality: The perception of tender care, interpersonal regard, emotional attachment, and compassionate goodwill conveyed by the narrative, characters, music, or voiceover (captured by the item evaluating an “affectionate tone”). Affection reflects active, tender interpersonal bonding rather than passive politeness.

Crucially, perceived ad warmth is distinct from general positive attitude toward the ad ($A_{ad}$). An advertisement may be evaluated favorably because it is intellectually stimulating, witty, visually spectacular, or functionally informative—none of which necessarily communicate warmth. Warmth specifically requires the projection of human-centered empathy, care, and emotional approachability. Consequently, perceived ad warmth represents a focused affective appraisal that acts as an antecedent to brand-level warmth inferences and relational brand attachment.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the ATADW is grounded in the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), formulated by Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy, Peter Glick, and Jerome Xu (2002), and its subsequent adaptation to brand and marketing perception through the Brands as Intentional Agents Framework (BIAF; Kervyn, Fiske, & Malone, 2012). The SCM posits that human social perception is universally governed by two orthogonal dimensions: warmth (perceptions of morality, trustworthiness, friendliness, and benevolence) and competence (perceptions of efficacy, intelligence, skill, capability, and assertiveness).

In social and evolutionary psychology, warmth judgments hold primacy over competence judgments because discerning an entity’s intent (whether friend or foe) carries more immediate survival consequence than assessing their ability to enact that intent. In commercial communication, brands project personality and communicative cues that consumers decode anthropomorphically. Advertisements serve as direct behavioral displays of a brand’s character. By utilizing specific narrative cues—such as gentle acoustic music, soft lighting, loving family interactions, and supportive phrasing—advertisers trigger cognitive schemata associated with warmth and communion.

Furthermore, the ATADW relies on the theoretical mechanics of the Hydraulic or Compensation Effect in social judgment (Judd et al., 2005; Yzerbyt et al., 2008). According to this cognitive phenomenon, when observers compare two social entities or evaluate an entity across contexts where one dimension is overtly salient, a compensatory heuristic often emerges: high perceived warmth can lead observers to implicitly infer lower competence, and vice versa. Kim and Ball (2021) extended this compensatory framework to advertising appeals. When an advertisement emphasizes extreme warmth, consumers may unconsciously wonder whether the product or firm possesses the technical competence, precision, and technological sophistication necessary to deliver superior performance. To map, track, and model these psychological trade-offs empirically, a pure, dedicated operationalization of ad-induced warmth is required, which the ATADW provides.

7. Validity

The ATADW exhibits robust empirical validity across laboratory experiments and structural equation modeling evaluations documented by Kim and Ball (2021) and subsequent replications:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by high, uniform factor loadings on the single latent warmth dimension. Confirmatory factor analyses reveal standardized factor loadings ranging from .86 to .95 across independent samples, significantly exceeding the conventional .70 threshold. The average variance extracted (AVE) for the four-item construct routinely exceeds .75, indicating that the latent construct accounts for more than three-quarters of the variance in its observed indicators. Furthermore, the scale converges strongly with parallel measures of brand warmth, interpersonal communion, and affective empathic response scales ($r = .65$ to $.78, p < .001$), demonstrating convergent validity.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated with respect to:

• Perceived Ad Competence: The ATADW demonstrates clear statistical independence from measures of ad competence (e.g., items assessing whether an ad is informative, capable, efficient, or technically convincing). In confirmatory factor models, the correlation between latent warmth and competence factors remains moderate to low ($r = .15$ to $.35$), and the square root of the AVE for ATADW exceeds its inter-construct correlations with competence scales, meeting the rigorous Fornell-Larcker criterion.
• General Attitude Toward the Ad ($A_{ad}$): While correlated with overall ad liking ($r \approx .45$ to $.55$), the ATADW loads cleanly on a distinct factor when modeled alongside standard global semantic differential evaluations (e.g., bad/good, unappealing/appealing, unfavorable/favorable).

Predictive and Nomological Validity

The scale effectively predicts downstream brand inferences and consumer choices. In experimental designs manipulating advertising tone (warmth appeal vs. competence appeal vs. control), the ATADW successfully detected experimental manipulation effects with high statistical power ($F > 45.0, p < .001, eta_p^2 > .25$). Crucially, in testing the compensation effect, higher scores on the ATADW mediated the relationship between warm emotional advertising executions and downstream brand warmth perceptions, while simultaneously predicting negative indirect paths to brand competence inferences in product categories where technical efficiency is prized.

8. Reliability

The ATADW exhibits internal consistency reliability across diverse experimental populations, commercial categories, and demographic samples:

• Internal Consistency: In the original validation studies conducted by Kim and Ball (2021), Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients consistently ranged between .92 and .95 across distinct experimental conditions and study phases. This demonstrates exceptional item homogeneity without problematic redundancy.
• Composite Reliability: In structural equation modeling evaluations, the composite reliability (CR) of the scale routinely exceeds .93, well above the recommended .70 cutoff for behavioral science measurement instruments.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-to-total correlations for each of the four items consistently range from .80 to .91, confirming that every individual statement contributes meaningfully and substantially to the underlying latent construct.
• Measurement Stability: In split-half reliability tests and cross-sample invariance assessments across different product types (utilitarian vs. hedonic), the scale maintains structural stability, demonstrating consistent parameter estimates across varied experimental manipulations.

9. Factor Analysis

Empirical evaluations of the dimensionality of the ATADW confirm a parsimonious, unidimensional factor structure.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During preliminary psychometric exploration using principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood extractions with oblimin rotation, the four items consistently load on a single dominant factor. The initial eigenvalue for the first factor typically ranges between 3.15 and 3.50, accounting for 78% to 88% of the total variance across observed variables. The scree plot displays an unmistakable elbow inflection at the second factor (eigenvalues for subsequent factors remain well below 0.35), verifying unidimensionality.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analyses conducted on independent consumer validation samples establish that a one-factor model provides an outstanding fit to empirical data. Typical goodness-of-fit indices reported in empirical investigations include:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $ge .985$ (values $ge .95$ indicate excellent fit)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $ge .970$ (values $ge .95$ indicate superior model specification)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $le .052$ ($90%\text{ CI } [.000, .085]$, indicating close approximation fit)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $le .021$ (values $le .05$ reflect negligible residual covariance)
• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom: $chi^2 / df < 2.50, p > .05$ in properly sized calibration samples

Standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) are exceptionally high and balanced across the four indicators:

• Item 1 (“The ad felt warm”): $lambda = .89 – .94$
• Item 2 (“The ad had a cozy tone”): $lambda = .84 – .88$
• Item 3 (“The ad conveyed warmth”): $lambda = .91 – .95$
• Item 4 (“The ad had an affectionate tone”): $lambda = .86 – .91$

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Attitude Toward the Ad (Warmth) (ATADW)
• Original Authors: Taemin Kim and Jennifer Gerard Ball (2021)
• Construct Measured: Perceived advertising warmth (affective closeness, coziness, empathy, affectionate tone)
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale
• Item Count: 4 items
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil, computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI), or online survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, Gorilla, CloudResearch)
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes
• Target Population: Consumers, study participants, and general audience members exposed to promotional, advertising, or public relations stimuli
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)
• Scoring and Index Calculation: All four items are positively phrased. No reverse-scoring is required. An overall composite score of perceived ad warmth is generated by calculating the unweighted arithmetic mean of the four responses:
  $$\text{Perceived Ad Warmth} = \frac{\text{Item } 1 + \text{Item } 2 + \text{Item } 3 + \text{Item } 4}{4}$$
  Scores range from 1.00 to 7.00, with higher values reflecting stronger perceived warmth, emotional intimacy, and affectionate tonality in the evaluated advertisement.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Warmth) scale was published in 2021 in the Journal of Advertising (Volume 50, Issue 5, pages 622–638), published by Routledge / Taylor & Francis. The scale items are published within the public scholarly domain for academic, scientific, non-profit, and educational research purposes under standard academic fair-use conventions. Researchers utilizing the instrument in published studies, dissertations, or scientific communications should cite the primary validation paper by Kim and Ball (2021). No licensing fees or formal permissions are required for non-commercial academic research. Commercial entities seeking proprietary deployment or inclusion in commercial testing batteries should review institutional copyright guidelines governed by the publisher.

12. References

• Cuddy, A. J., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 61–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(07)00002-0
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.6.878
• Judd, C. M., James-Hawkins, L., Yzerbyt, V., & Kashima, Y. (2005). Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: Understanding the relations between impressions of competence and warmth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 899–913. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.899
• Kervyn, N., Fiske, S. T., & Malone, C. (2012). Brands as intentional agents: Warmth and competence predict brand perception, choice, and loyalty. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(2), 166–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.09.006
• Kim, T., & Ball, J. G. (2021). Unintended consequences of warmth appeals: An extension of the compensation effect between warmth and competence to advertising. Journal of Advertising, 50(5), 622–638. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1927912
• Yzerbyt, V., Provost, V., & Corneille, O. (2005). Not competent but warm… Really? Compensatory stereotypes in the French-speaking world. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 8(3), 291–308. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430205053944

13. Items of the Scale